Chicago Premiere * A Catered Affair *

I was doing my friend Cheryl Coons’ hair today and she was telling me about Porchlight Theater’s newest stage play, A Catered Affair. (She’s on the board at Porchlight.) I love old movies and movie stars, and I love contemporary film and actors too. And what intrigued me about this production was that it was adapted from a 1956 Bette Davis film, The Catered Affair. The original film also starred Ernest Borgnine (I went to Cosmetology school with his daughter.), Debbie Reynolds (Love her!), Barry Fitzgerald (The Quiet Man) and Rod Taylor (The Birds). The screenplay was written by Gore Vidal (Caligula) and the teleplay by Paddy Chayefsky (Network).

Cheryl told me that this stage version was originally adapted for Broadway from the film by Harvey Fierstein as a musical with music and lyrics by John Bucchino (Way famous New York cabaret songwriter.) The show premiered on September, 2007 at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre. It went to Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre on March, 2008 and ran through July of 2008. The production also starred Faith Prince (Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards) and Tom Wopat (Dukes of Hazard) and it received 12 Drama Desk Award nominations, the most of any show from the 2007-2008 season.

I cannot wait to see what Porchlight Director Nick Bowling and Chicago stars Rebecca Finnegan and Craig Spindle are going to do with this Chicago premiere which features a melodious, 50s inspired score directed by Doug Peck.  I heard that the Fierstein production had a lot of star power behind it so it got a lot of staging and media attention for such a character driven play; which might be served better by a small theater production. Porchlight is the perfect award winning company to perform the task.

I’ll let you click on the trailer below to hear and see Porchlight’s interpretation. Here’s the synopsis of the film which is basically the same: “At breakfast, Jane announces that she and Ralph are getting married the next week. All Jane and Ralph want is a small wedding with the immediate family and no reception. This is because Janes parents are poor and Jane and Ralph can borrow a car for their honeymoon. However, at dinner that night all Ralph's parents talk about are the big weddings they gave their daughters and everything escalates. All of a sudden, it is a big wedding breakfast with hundreds of guests. The problem is that for 12 years, Tom has been saving money to buy his own cab and license, but now that he can, all of his money is going towards a wedding neither he, or Jane or Ralph really want.”

A Catered Affair runs February 18 through April 1 Presented at Stage 773 • 1225 W Belmont in Chicago

Tickets

Check out the kewl trailer by Porchlight on a fundraising page.   Click here.  Feel free to donate too. At the time I viewed this, they had 96 backers and had raised $4,278 of their $3,500 goal! Porchlight Music Theatre is raising funds for enhanced orchestrations to support this production's musical vision, which includes an onstage string quartet, bass, reed and piano players!